The Butterfly Effect

'Curl up with a stiff whiskey and lose yourself in the inquiring mind of Igi Heitmann' - Guardian

The intricate knots in the mystery keep the reader in a constant state of tension.  Pernille Rygg creates...a story which is dynamic and hypnotic

Miss Smilia's Feeling for Snow revisited

A compelling thriller which invites comparison with Hoeg

Pernille Rygg was born in 1963. She has studied history and ethnology, for several years worked as a set painter for film companies and for the Norwegian Broadcasting Company. She is also author of The Golden Section.

It is a cold, dark, windy night in Oslo and Igi Heitmann pores over the debris in her dead father's office, trying to piece together the last days of his life as a failed private eye. She discovers a curious butterfly medallion in his desk - which in turn leads to the discovery of a young woman in a snow-drift, two bullets in her head and a gun in her hand. Igi's father and the young woman died within hours of each other - is the same person responsible for both their deaths? 
 
Igi soon finds herself in the role of detective, on a trail that leads to the city's underworld of corruption, sadism and child abuse. Caught amongst the shards of a dozen shattered lives, she must tread carefully if she is to reconstruct the violent and tragic truth, and not be killed in the process.

Pernille Rygg

Don Bartlett

Curl up with a stiff whiskey and lose yourself in the inquiring mind of Igi Heitmann, a heroine of Smilla-like unconventionality

Her distinctive voice brings a special quality to the story she tells in The Golden Section... Full of powerful descriptive passages, this is a book which stays in the memory

Pernille Rygg is one of the 'hard-boiled' school, critical of society, whose roots are deep in the worlds of Hammett and Chandler

Igi Heitmann is being stalked. In the suburb of Oslo where she lives with her cross-dressing husband and their daughter, someone is spray-painting the walls of the houses. HEITMANN = CHILD KILLER, the graffiti says. Who would think this, and how do they know where she lives? 
 
On a bitter winter's evening, Igi attends the opening of the exhibition of an avant-garde artist whose use of violent pornography has caused great controversy. A video is playing, showing a young man being strangled as part of a sado-masochistic sex game. Moving between the world of violent pornographic art and the happy life she shares with her husband and daughter, Igi must follow a dangerous and shocking path to the truth. 
 
An Igi Heitman mystery.

Pernille Rygg

Praise for The Golden Section

Curl up with a stiff whiskey and lose yourself in the inquiring mind of Igi Heitmann, a heroine of Smilla-like unconventionality

Her distinctive voice brings a special quality to the story she tells in The Golden Section... Full of powerful descriptive passages, this is a book which stays in the memory

Pernille Rygg is one of the 'hard-boiled' school, critical of society, whose roots are deep in the worlds of Hammett and Chandler

Curl up with a stiff whiskey and lose yourself in the inquiring mind of Igi Heitmann, a heroine of Smilla-like unconventionality

Her distinctive voice brings a special quality to the story she tells in The Golden Section... Full of powerful descriptive passages, this is a book which stays in the memory

Pernille Rygg is one of the 'hard-boiled' school, critical of society, whose roots are deep in the worlds of Hammett and Chandler

Curl up with a stiff whiskey and lose yourself in the inquiring mind of Igi Heitmann, a heroine of Smilla-like unconventionality

Her distinctive voice brings a special quality to the story she tells in The Golden Section... Full of powerful descriptive passages, this is a book which stays in the memory

Pernille Rygg is one of the 'hard-boiled' school, critical of society, whose roots are deep in the worlds of Hammett and Chandler

Books by Pernille Rygg

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